Chinese man dies from bird flu
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By Maria Cendejas
Monday Jan 1, 2012 (foodconsumer.org) -- A state report says that man in southern China's Guangdong province died of bird flu on Saturday after being admitted to hospital last week with a fever, according to Reuters.
The Xinhua news agency said the 39-year-old bus driver living in Shenzhen developed symptoms on the 21st of December and he went to a hospital on December 25 because of severe pneumonia.
He died of multiple organ failure and he tested positive for the H5N1 virus.
He didn't leave the city and he also had no contact with any poultry in the prior month of getting sick, said Xinhua.
The Southern Daily (Guangdong's newspaper) said 120 people who had contact with the bus driver had no signs of sickness.
Ten days ago, Hong Kong gathered 17,000 chickens at a poultry market and put off all imports of live chickens from China for 21 days after they tested positive for the H5N1 virus.
The virus is normally found in birds but people who do not have immunity to it may get the virus. The researchers worry that it could cause it to spread around the world and kill millions of people.
During the cooler months in Asia the virus has become active in recent years.
The current strain of H5N1 is highly pathogenic, it kills most species of birds and up to 60% of the people it infects. The virus also kills migratory birds but they manage to survive, they can carry and spread the virus to new uninfected locations.
It has infected 573 people around the world only killing 336 since 2003.
It is easily less transmittable between people but there have been several of infections in people in Indonesia and Thailand in the past.
Vitamin D is believed to be essential for preventing bacterial or viral infections like bird flu. Vitamin D is known to boost innate immunity against microbial infections, according to studies published earlier in the prestigious journal Nature.
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